


Wear My Chains

by Shaitanah



Category: Being Human
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Future Fic, Hell, M/M, Purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-02
Updated: 2012-08-02
Packaged: 2017-11-11 06:49:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/475744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaitanah/pseuds/Shaitanah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Behind a door in Purgatory, there is one vampire, maybe two, maybe a legion. It’s a matter of opinion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wear My Chains

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Being Human belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC.  
> A/N: IDK where this came from aside from having been inspired by the line "You don’t know me and you don’t wear my chains" from “Boston” by Augustana. Expect weird imagery, choppy writing, lots of name dropping, general mindfuck and basic plotlessness.

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed

In one self place; for where we are is hell,

And where hell is there must we ever be.

 

Christopher Marlowe. “Doctor Faustus”

 

It’s the ghost of a ghost in the walls, a pearly patina of memories of the ones who died spread thin over the brickwork. Hell is relative and hell is inside them and around them, circumspect and watchful, and most of the time they are not sure how many of them are there or whose cell it is or who came first.

 

There is Mitchell and he carries traces of the others in him, his blood bitter with memories of his line. They are not related; at least Hal doesn’t think so. Mitchell comes from Herrick who comes from Hettie who is rumoured to have been recruited by Mr Snow himself or at least someone once removed from him. Hal doesn’t know his ancestry beyond the army surgeon that recruited him but he’s pretty sure their bloodlines meet only in Mr Snow. And Mr Snow is here as well, in Hal, in Mitchell, in Herrick who’s an inky splotch on the wall, in Jacob who is a scrap of dust hanging from the ceiling, in Richard Turner who lives and dies over and over again, in Cara who is an echo of mad laughter, in Lauren who is a cold tear welling up in Mitchell’s eye, in Daisy who is a thick coat of ash beneath their feet, in Graham who rustles like old newspaper clippings, in countless others, old and new, born out of the pact the two brothers had made.

 

Mitchell thinks this hell belongs to him. He died years, possibly centuries before Hal, so he is entitled to his own corner in the nightmare circus. Hal is so old that his years spill over the brim and flood the cell, and as the water rises, Mitchell thinks: well, fuck.

 

He tears at Hal’s throat with his teeth and sucks the blood of the Old One. It lacks spice. He yells silently, _get out, get out, get out_ , because he doesn’t want the cloying memories of the Old One living in his house, looking at Annie every day, taking care of his best friend’s daughter.

 

Hal’s got nothing to apologize for. He lets his blood flow freely down Mitchell’s throat and he envies his memories of a shorter life and the way Annie looked at him, the way Pearl looked at Leo, the way hundreds of women had looked at Hal but he never looked back.

 

Mitchell unclenches his jaws and screams. He wants Hal to be George but George is good and he is not in hell. Mitchell wants to stretch the remaining scraps of humanity over himself like a bandage but he’s covered in Herrick from head to toe and he can’t clean it off. Herrick is a memory that goes bone-deep, mingles with marrow and makes eyes go black and teeth grow sharp. Maybe there is another cell with Herrick in it where the walls are stained with Mitchell in so complicated a pattern that even the best spatter analyst wouldn’t know what to make of it.

 

Hal builds up fence after fence, hiding behind his routines, his precise and meaningless rituals, his cult of Leo and his affection for Tom and Alex and _don’t say her name_ Annie.

 

They don’t talk, don’t exchange rehab tips, don’t listen.

 

Lauren leaks out of Mitchell’s eyes in a torrent of blood he had drunk and she coils around him, making Hal wonder at the curious absence of Cutler. His blood is knee-high, all the recruits he’s lost, all the lives he’s destroyed, all the names Kirby knew, all the stories Annie refused to hear.

 

Mitchell is between one fifth of Hal and infinity at his one hundred and seventeen. He is solid and when he finally shifts closer, Hal reclaims the blood he stole. He drinks straight from Mitchell’s mouth, biting ferociously at the lips and the tongue. He is all buttoned up shirts where Mitchell is sleeveless vests and woolen mitts that make him look like a seedy rock star, and they’re never going to get along, but there is time to spare.

 

Mitchell rolls his _r’s_ like the words are made of jelly and his mouth is stuffed with it. He coughs everything up; there is a certain rabid poetry to the way he handles himself.

 

He pins Hal to the floor and rips him open layer by layer, peeling off the memories of Cutler rising and falling in waves of hunger and desperate need. He moves inside Hal, driving himself deeper, eliciting ragged moans from Hal because it’s all right if nobody listens.

 

The walls bleed memories until they can’t breathe, and the release is violent and leaves them wanting more and not admitting it.

 

Next time it’s Hal who flips Mitchell over and eases himself inside and is struck by _I’m doing this because I love you_ and _Take care of him_ and _You were the love of my long life_ and sharp pain in the chest. Mitchell pushes back, taking him in deeper, hot and messy the way humans do it.

 

They drink from each other and swallow each other’s sins and flashes of remorse. They drip memories out of every pore and their bodies are covered in teeth marks and bleeding gashes. Sometimes Hal thrusts deep into the wet heat of Mitchell’s mouth; sometimes Mitchell’s fingers dig painfully into Hal’s hips, and they don’t always know where one ends and the other begins.

 

They don’t always tell each other apart. They’ve both met Adam who seems to be not here. They’ve both eaten Annie’s pancakes. They both know Tom. But there is a Lucy in one of them and a Pearl inside the other. There is a pretty blond detective sucked dry in the attic of their house and there is licking Alex’s congealed blood off the floor in a night club basement. There is the Box Tunnel Twenty and there are brutal dog fights.

 

They try to sort things out. Who came first, who existed before. At first there was Mitchell; Hal is pretty sure he hadn’t existed before Mitchell was out of the picture. He doesn’t know what to do with his centuries worth of baggage. Maybe it’s not his at all. Maybe he’s always been a poorly written substitute.

 

Sometimes they think they are the same person: a soldier recruited on battlefield (the story varies but the soldier is always offered a choice and he never says no), bathed in blood and corroded by guilt. On odd days they have pizza; on even days they set up the dominoes.

 

Mitchell’s condensed, desiccated memory curls up tight inside Hal even though there is plenty of room. The ceiling oozes Fergus and Dennis and Louis, and Mitchell chokes on the fifties because he was there as well, and rewinds a hundred years back to screaming plump maids and faint noble daughters. They paint the cell red.

 

With Mitchell, it’s always for someone, be it Josie or Lucy or Annie or even George. With Hal, it’s mostly because of, and that’s a challenge: Hal’s inborn dualism makes it hard enough for him to contain himself, let alone Mitchell. Hal limits himself to three letters, while Mitchell expands into eight. Hal carries impossible lacunas of existence whereas Mitchell has lived out every second given to him and is spiraling backwards. There is a hell in Mitchell, dangling off his name like a key on a keychain. There is a hell in Hal if you mess up the vowel.

 

Hell is only populated with vampires. They will gnaw at each other in their tiny cells, their clusters of two or three or four, until their teeth wear thin and their fury scatters in cold ashes, and nobody will come for them.

 

Mitchell is different. He believes someone will come. On some days his faith is but smouldering cinders. He is the man who asked for his death; Hal’s was forced on him. The cell is Mitchell’s.

 

Don’t go into the wall, he tells Hal one day. I don’t mind you here.

 

He gives Hal the tepid cinders that are barely enough for one of them, let alone two, and Hal wonders what the point of this is. Maybe Mitchell has made Hal up to keep him company, hence the similarities and the differences. Hal himself couldn’t have made anything up; he lacks imagination under torture.

 

But Hal stays solid, fixed in time and space, away from the walls, and remembers himself the way he was: a boy on a ship facing away from beautiful England as the sea swirled around him, hungry like the memories he didn’t have back then.

 

Suddenly there are plenty of reasons to stay. And he stays.  

 

Slowly, they learn to be separate.

 

_August 2, 2012_


End file.
